Tick tock —

Reports: Microsoft planning to unveil Xbox successor at April event

Company might not be willing to wait for the E3 expo in June.

With Sony jump-starting the next-generation console hype train with its PlayStation 4 reveal this week, it seems Microsoft might not be willing to wait for June's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) to unveil its follow-up to the Xbox. Computer & Video Games is reporting that Microsoft is planning a "one-off media event" to show off its new system in early April, based on information from unnamed sources inside and outside of Microsoft.

Practically the entire professional game industry will be gathered together in San Francisco at the end of March for the Game Developers Conference, which would also seem like a natural time for Microsoft to reveal its next-gen plans to an interested audience. Then again, Microsoft could use GDC as a sort of pre-tease tease, letting slip certain small, developer-centric details before a fuller April event.

One thing seems clear: every day people spend talking about the PS4 without any solid information on Microsoft's response is probably being seen as a bit of a missed PR opportunity in Redmond.

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I hope that the Xbox announcement will be every bit as information-rich as the original Surface announcement.

9059 posts | registered Jan 1, 2006

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

Well, MS has a few things on their to-do list. They're going to have to at least match the PS4 in the specifications race, whether they want to or not. That means 8GB RAM, along with a hard drive standard. I guess they can play games with the rest of the specifications (CPU, etc), but they'll get crucified if they announce an inferior system.

Also, now that Sony has sort of confirmed that used games aren't completely useless, MS has to follow suit. Good for the customers.

It will be interesting to see if they actually follow through on the blocking-used-games threats. Seeing how the other 2 major console players have passed on that particular "feature", Micosoft can either alienate customers (but *supposedly* win over developers) with the game blocking, or they can go with the flow. The next month or so of speculation will be agonizing.

Well, MS has a few things on their to-do list. They're going to have to at least match the PS4 in the specifications race, whether they want to or not. That means 8GB RAM, along with a hard drive standard. I guess they can play games with the rest of the specifications (CPU, etc), but they'll get crucified if they announce an inferior system.

Also, now that Sony has sort of confirmed that used games aren't completely useless, MS has to follow suit. Good for the customers.

The rumors for at least a year have been saying Xbox vNext will have 8GB of RAM so I suspect that won't be an issue. It was actually surprising the PS4 did as well since the rumors of it had consistently said only 4GB.

But I do disagree with the comment that if the next Xbox is lesser hardware they will get crucified. As long as it is relatively close MS will be fine. I fully expect the PS4 will again have a higher theoretical performance cap. If I had to hazard a guess I would say MS will go with a higher CPU but lower GPU & Memory clock than the PS4.

As for the used games, Sony was about as clear on that issue as a politician. They left themselves so much wiggle room it is ridiculous. IMO they won't give a clear answer until MS says which way they are going.

A huge win for MS would be to allow backward compatibility, which it will hopefully have given the more standard parts used in the 360.

Even with switching architectures I don't see why it's out of the question. The original Xbox ran on x86 and despite switching to POWER for the 360, I was able to play all of my old Xbox games just fine.

I would be interested thought in seeing some kind of poll about what the people would buy if both systems have the same specs, I know what I would choose... but curious what other people may think.

Assuming relatively similar specs (and I think that ultimately the performance differences will be negligible) and price, I will end up with a PS4 this time around, which is a switch from the previous two generations. I'm tired of the Live requirements to use the 360's full functionality, and I don't see that changing with the nextBox.

Well, MS has a few things on their to-do list. They're going to have to at least match the PS4 in the specifications race, whether they want to or not. That means 8GB RAM, along with a hard drive standard. I guess they can play games with the rest of the specifications (CPU, etc), but they'll get crucified if they announce an inferior system.

Also, now that Sony has sort of confirmed that used games aren't completely useless, MS has to follow suit. Good for the customers.

The Xbox has already been in R&D for years, and dev kits are already out. They will not be making any hardware changes at this point in the development cycle to react to anything Sony said. If there are differences in software features, they can still incorporate some of that over time, but not all in time for a November launch if it's not already well in process.

Also, now that Sony has sort of confirmed that used games aren't completely useless, MS has to follow suit. Good for the customers.

Sony have confirmed no such thing. They danced around the question and, if anything, tried to shift the blame for possible used game blocking onto the publishers, saying vaguely that it will be a choice of each publisher whether to do it or not. It is unclear whether they simply meant online passes such as are in use already now, or something more draconian.

In any case, we should probably wait for Atlus to be the first publisher to use this option. Just kidding, we all know it will be EA, because, who else, really?

From rumors like http://www.vgleaks.com/world-exclusive- ... nveiled-2/ the CPU/GPU/RAM specs look almost identical to PS4. It's almost like an HP PC versus a DELL PC, but you must buy both if you want to be able to run all software (i.e. exclusive titles). I'm not sure I like this development ...

after experiencing first hand some of the problems with multi-platform ports this generation: I'll buy the one that has the most RAM. PS3, despite it's specs, has had numerous games that preformed poorer than the XBOX version, due the game being optimized for the larger of the twos memory capacity.

If the various leaks prove to be accurate then the new XBox will probably be slightly less powerful than the PS4 since it'll have slower RAM and fewer GCN Compute Cores in the GPU. Using DDR3 over DDR5 will keep the manufacturing costs (bill of materials) down, but then again Microsoft will be packing in their new version of Kinect which could add to the cost. The final retail prices for both systems could be close, but in the end Microsoft could afford to sell their system at a loss more than Sony could - not that they necessarily will, it's just that if push came to shove Microsoft could be more aggressive with their pricing.

If the various leaks prove to be accurate then the new XBox will probably be slightly less powerful than the PS4 since it'll have slower RAM and fewer GCN Compute Cores in the GPU. Using DDR3 over DDR5 will keep the manufacturing costs (bill of materials) down.

Well they are including 32MB of on die fast SRAM (which is sure to make the die costs go up as this takes up a lot of space).

It will be interesting to see if they actually follow through on the blocking-used-games threats. Seeing how the other 2 major console players have passed on that particular "feature", Micosoft can either alienate customers (but *supposedly* win over developers) with the game blocking, or they can go with the flow. The next month or so of speculation will be agonizing.

Of course, winning over developers means nothing without customers to buy games...

I hope MS's reveal event will be far more informative than Sony's. Like maybe have an actually 720 to show us. I also hope any vendors they have there will have more than just cinematic cut scenes to show us.

If the various leaks prove to be accurate then the new XBox will probably be slightly less powerful than the PS4 since it'll have slower RAM and fewer GCN Compute Cores in the GPU. Using DDR3 over DDR5 will keep the manufacturing costs (bill of materials) down.

Well they are including 32MB of on die fast SRAM (which is sure to make the die costs go up as this takes up a lot of space).

True, but I'm willing to bet that the cost of 8GBs of DDR5 will still exceed the cost of 8GBs of DDR3 along the additional 32MB on die SRAM, even assuming that Sony somehow had access to large 1GB DDR5 modules as Digital Foundry seems to think.